One of the world’s leading forest ecologists was the feature speaker at the Cortes Children’s Forest virtual AGM on Saturday, January 28th. This is the last in a series of programs from that meeting, in which Dr Suzanne Simard’s answers questions from the Children’s Forest Alumni.
Forrest Berman-Hatch emceed the session and this abridged broadcast of the audio opens with him asking, “ How do you see the value of the Children’s Forest taking into account all the different factors that are important to small communities like the ecological, the economic, as well as the cultural and scientific values?”
Suzanne Simard: “I think it’s fantastic, there is so much value. I grew up in a forest and everything I do – from being in the forest and growing up in the forest – I’ve put my whole life into protecting forests. Really, when children grow up in these places, it just becomes part of them. It’s not just like protecting forests, it’s protecting all the connections in life.”
“The connections in society: even if your life is devoted to human relations, you learn so much about that in the forest. We are all here together. The trees and plants are our ancestors and we respect them, we learn to respect them.”
“We learn about the relations in the forest. Everything is relational. Loving something is really important to protecting. Those fundamental principles of life, you learn about them from your environments, like our forest where we live. Our whole lives are dependent and interdependent with these places that we live.”
“There’s no better place to do that than in the very home that you grew up in and it’s really, really important. It shapes you, it becomes you. You become it.”
Mia Gregg: “The second question we have for you are what roles, responsibilities, activities – that kind of thing – do you envision for youth alumni and young adults in the Children’s Forest. Can you envision how the Mother tree network could play a role in the children’s forest, which you’ve already spoken to as well, but some very exciting things.”
Suzanne Simard: “There’s kids that are in the forest learning now, I’m sure. I see this around British Columbia when I visit different places. How the curriculum in schools, in a lot of cases, is moving into forests or into to the outdoors. All the things that we could otherwise learn in the classroom, you can learn all of those and even better in the forest.”
“I was watching some kids in Maple Ridge last week. They were learning trigonometry by measuring the heights of trees and the angles. At the same time, the next activity was that they could build a tree fort in that tree and get to know that tree really intimately. I’m sure that those lessons were embedded in them much more deeply than you would learn them in a classroom.”
“It’s just a fantastic place to learn.”
“I think that for alumni like you – Kiera, Mia, Forrest – you’ve just built on that to find your path for the rest of your lives, whatever you’re doing. I’m sure you are going to make great contributions to society because you learn how societies work from being in those forests.”
“I encourage you to continue on those paths and give back to society because you’ve learned from the best; you’ve learned from the trees and all the elders around you.”
“I think we need more and more children who are connected in that way, who will continue to fight for our natural world.”
Kiera Tsakonas: “The last question that we had for you, which you have also spoken to a bit, was how do you see the Children’s Forest in relation to the local realities of climate change? Then extending that, in terms of the global climate movement? How would you situate this and what is your perspective – because you work a lot with communities.”
Suzanne Simard: “One thing I hear from my students and my kids – I have two daughters who are 22 and 24 who’ve gone through forestry school – when they learn about climate change, it’s depressing. You sit in the classroom and you’re hearing all this depressing stuff. People, kids especially, they’re like, ‘again.’ When it goes down to the negative part, it’s like you shut down and you go, ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this. Then as soon as we start talking about solutions, when I start talking about solutions, everybody brightens up and they start thinking again.”
“So what Cortes can offer to the world is solutions, being an example for the world of how you can address these things. Just having a community research and education hub in your community, that’s a beacon of hope for people.”
“Every community that we have been in, they want that too. Where they can learn and be in the forest themselves and do it themselves because they have been there and living there for their entire lives, as have their ancestors sometimes for thousands and thousands of years. Cortes Island can provide the pilot, if you will, of how this can be done.”
“We don’t have enough of those in the world. In fact, we don’t really have anything yet like that in British Columbia. So I think Cortes can be the very first one where you’re doing this, you’re protecting your children’s forest, you’re also managing your other forests and restoring whatever has been lost.”
“People will look, and they’ll come and they’ll say,’ ah, this can be done in my community too.’ That is extremely valuable.”
“From a more biophysical view of climate change, Cortes is in a unique area because it’s in this transition between drier and wetter parts of coastal ecosystems. When you have those ecotones, you have a lot more biodiversity. There’s a lot of interesting things happening. There’s a lot of energy in those ecosystems that’s different than other ones that are more core ecosystems, or more core central forests because you have these transition zones. You also have a lot of adaptability because species diversity is correlated with adaptability.”
“Consequently as climate changes, if it’s affecting part of your island in one way, you can look to those parts to learn how it’s going to change in other places. You can also work with the species because you’ve got so many unique species and diversity. That helps with the adaptability of the communities as well. Species can move, you can help species move.”
“You have a lot here in Cortes for protecting and for being adaptable.”
“The other thing that you have, and that’s really important, is these intact forests. These old growth forests, they’re resilient. They have certain features that protect them. Like the big old Douglas Fir which has deep roots and thick bark. That means that when there’s fires, those old trees are going to still be there – even if there’s an unusual fire. So you have a lot of inherent resistance to climate change as well as resilience.”
“It will resist because it’s got all these old trees, but it’s resilient because you also have a lot of diversity.”
“So from a climate change perspective then, just to summarize:
- It’s a great example for the world in terms of education and research and as a community that’s come together and an example for everybody else to follow if they want.
- The uniqueness of the ecosystem actually provides you with a great deal of resistance and resilience to climate change that, again, others can learn from and apply to their own forests and communities.
Kiera Tsakonas: Thank you. It’s always amazing to come back to Cortes and see everything that’s going on. I’m just so grateful that we’re able to see ourselves in the data. I think that’s really powerful.
Other Articles from the 2023 Children’s Forest AGM:
- Dr Suzanne Simard: The Mother Tree Network & Cortes Island
- Expert Panel Discussion: Suzanne Simard, Tzeporah Berman, Paul Stamets
Top image credit: Some of the children hiking through the Childrens forest in 2012 – screenshot from the Daniel J Pierce film ‘The Carrington Bay Children’s Forest
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